Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Ireland is a pawn in the
stuttering euro experiment, a minor piece that can be sacrificed at any time in
the greater game that has been played out for many decades between Germany and
France in their drive for a federal ‘United States of Europe’-style EU.

Full European Monetary Union (EMU)
is an integral part of that drive, all new entrants to the EU mandated to join
the euro, all current members (with the exception of the UK and Denmark) mandated to join
eventually. With EMU comes full European Fiscal Union, European Banking Union and
every other economic union you care to mention, all national monetary, fiscal
and banking policy surrendered.

Within that union Ireland is
insignificant, dispensable – witness the threats before the Troika came to
town, witness further what happened to Greece, with a similar-sized economy to
our own but twice our population.

Despite the fact that already
we have grievously suffered as a direct consequence of joining the new currency
(and we aren’t alone, with five Eurozone going bankrupt, all the rest bar
Germany with massively increased debt/GDP ratio), our current government sees
no problem with this drive to ever-closer union, more than willing to see us
subsumed into this new EU.

For those of us who would
prefer to see Ireland as an independent republic among equals in a scaled-back EU,
that’s a serious concern.

EU-PAWNS

Of even more concern, however,
is what emerged last week, the invocation by the France of the EU Treaty clause
42.7, the mutual defence clause, and our government’s response to it.

Because of our long-held and
widely respected policy of neutrality, we have an exemption under that clause,
yet this government has opted to send Irish troops to the al Qaeda hotspot of
Mali, to enable France to free up its troops there. This is a dangerous
development, really dangerous.

What happened in Paris last Friday week is
deplorable.

What happened in Beirut a few
days before that is deplorable.

What happened in Kenya this
year, in Nigeria, is deplorable.

What’s happening right now in
Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine is deplorable.

Indiscriminate firing of
rockets into Israel, attacks on individuals, is deplorable.

None of those statements in
any way takes from the others – there are so many atrocities happening right
now across the globe, carried out in the name of one god or another, fiscal or physical
or theological, all deplorable.

Ireland, however, does NOT
need to be sucked into this.

A KALEIDOSCOPE IN
BLACK-AND-WHITE

What’s happening in the Middle
East right now is being presented to us in very simple and stark terms – it’s
good versus evil, a clash of civilisations, them against us.

It is not.

The Middle East may not be the
kaleidoscope of people and religions and attitudes that we enjoy in Europe but
neither is it a monolith, one people with one idea and Israel apart (as it is),
one religion. There is, and always was, diversity, colour, tolerance,
friendship, hospitality, music, laughter, song.

What’s happening now though, the
destruction of the Middle East, is all about the oil, about control of the
fields, the production, the pumping, the pipelines.

Since the early 1900s, Britain
and/or the US has been toppling regimes in this region, replacing them with those
whom they deemed supportive of UK and US needs. How those puppet regimes treated their own
people? Irrelevant. Does anyone seriously believe
that the western ‘allies’ gave a damn about the everyday fate of ordinary
Libyans under Ghaddafi, or ordinary Syrians under Assad, any more than they gave
a curse about Iraqis under Saddam Hussein or Iranians under the Ayatollahs?

This isn’t conjecture, this
isn’t conspiracy, this is recorded fact. Almost a century before the recent
ill-fated western-backed ‘Arab Spring’, in 1916 we had the western-backed ‘Arab
Uprising’ against the Ottoman Empire, but when it was all over, Britain and
France carved up what was left between them. Ever since then, the US a late but
most enthusiastic arrival to the party, they have all played their own games in
that unfortunate area.

BUSH FIRE RAGES ACROSS THE
MIDDLE EAST

The current turmoil was
started by George Bush Snr in 1992 with the first invasion of Iraq, continued
by his son and his allies in 2003, subsequently added to with orchestrated
chaos right across the region.

Many of those on the ground –
probably most of those on the ground – are fighting what they see as a
religious war. That’s what those who are pulling the strings want them to
think, that’s what they want all of us to think, that’s what our own government
now seems to think. But, just as with Ireland and the euro, they are pawns in a
much bigger and much dirtier game, WE are pawns in a much bigger and much
dirtier game.

We need to step back from this
and have a good, hard look. By all means offer all the non-military help we can
to the people of Paris and of France, to any other of the innocents in all
this. But Mali, al Qaeda, troops? An increase in our defence budget to include
fighter jets?